They Tell Her To Die
by missmorganpryce
Summary: Dawn hates being left alone, and she doesn't like the voices either. Warning: suicide


She can feel the emptiness of the house from the sidewalk.  
  
Dawn stops walking and gazes at the house, mentally chiding herself. She can't feel an empty house, and anyway, Willow should be home.  
  
She walks up the driveway and twists her key in the lock.  
  
"Willow?"  
  
The house sounds eerie in its quietness; the silence almost sounds like little whispers. And Dawn knows she is truly alone when those whispers start to hiss sweet nothings into her ears.  
  
There is a note on the front table. It is light yellow with a daisy border, covered with Willow's flowing handwriting.  
  
_Dear Sweetie_, it starts out. Damn Willow and her pet names.  
  
_I'm out working on_ (there is a scratched out word here) _some stuff. I won't be home till later, and neither will Tara. Spike will be coming over as soon as it gets dark. I'm so sorry that no one's here right now, Sweetie. There's some turkey in the fridge, make yourself a sandwich. I rented a video last night; it's on top of the TV. I know you'll be fine. No leaving the house!  
-Willow"_  
  
Damn you," snaps Dawn as she rips up the note. "You know I don't want to be alone!" she screams into the silence.  
  
She glances at the clock. Two more hours until it gets dark and Spike will show up and she cannot visit anyone. She is trapped in the house, alone. This is the first time since her death that she's been alone for an extended period of time. Willow must think that she is doing better, otherwise she would have never left her alone.  
  
Almost drawn against her will, she drops her bag on the floor and starts to climb the staircase. She walks down the short corridor and opens the door to Buffy's room. It was still untouched by their hands; they had not packed anything away.  
  
It was like a shrine for Buffy, one people visited and paid their respects every once in a while.  
  
_You still miss her_, says a little voice she has been hearing for weeks. _You want to see her again, don't you?_  
  
Every time she has a few seconds alone in the bathroom, at night before she falls asleep, when she is walking to school, she hears soft whispers; commenting, questioning, observing and irritating.  
  
They are gentle voices, loving and kind, and they make her want to do terrible things. She still has half healed slashes on her arms from the last time she listened to them. She is probably schizophrenic, but she does not intend to tell Willow this anytime soon. If she wants to kill herself, and her inner voices are expressing this desire somehow subconsciously (she got this from a psychology book from the library) she has every right to do so. Buffy had died for her, it's all her fault; for being so careless, for being such an annoying brat sister, for letting bad things happen, for existing. She feels so empty inside, and why not? All she was made for was to contain a mystical power and now that power is gone; she's just a shell.  
  
She drags herself out of Buffy's room and heads downstairs to the kitchen. She switches on a radio to try to drown out the silence and the whispers.  
  
Dawn takes the turkey out of the fridge and plops it down on the counter. She searches the drawers for a knife to slice the turkey with. She is about to take a regular kitchen knife until her eyes fall onto a huge carving knife. She drops the small knife and picks up the carving knife, entranced by its sleek silvery sharpness. Then she trudges over to the turkey and begins to slice. It slices easily, sliding into the flesh like putty. She watches the knife neatly slice the turkey and her finger.  
  
"I just want to diiiieeeee," wails the radio, tuned to some death rock station. The music does not help very much, she thinks as she stares at her finger. It is just a flimsy cover for the silence.  
  
The blood drips all over the turkey, making it very unappetizing. She can feel her heartbeat in her finger as the blood gushes out of her finger with each contraction; it is a very deep cut and she probably needs stitches.  
  
Doesn't that feel good, letting all the tainted blood drip away? murmurs a voice.  
  
"Go away!" she screams at the voices. "Go!" Then her voice gives out, swallowed by the silence. She throws the radio on the floor and it continues to play, but it is broken up and filled with static now.  
  
"Die...for...me," croaks the radio.  
  
She spots a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye, but when she whirls around to confront it, it is gone. Then she turns around and Buffy is standing there.  
  
"Buffy!" She has found her voice again and she screams as loud as she can. Buffy is all bloody and bruised, the way they found her on the floor after she jumped-  
  
"Dawnie," murmurs Buffy as she fades away.  
  
"No! No! No!" she shrilly cries.  
  
_How many ways can you find?_ asks a voice. _Do that; she'll come back then._  
  
Dawn does not know what the voice is talking about, but her eyes fall on the drain cleaner on the floor and she knows what it wants.  
_  
How many ways can you kill yourself?_  
  
She is crazed and she turns around and knocks over a chair. She finds lighter fluid on the drier and knocks it over. The matches are back in the kitchen and she drops them on the floor. She grabs all the knives in the drawers and throws them at the wall like darts. She scatters pills all over the living room floor and rips the cord out of the TV.

_Very good._  
  
That snaps her out of it. Oh my god, what is she doing? Her finger is still bleeding and blood is smeared all over the walls. She runs to the phone and picks it up. Willow, she will call Willow. Willow will make it stop, it will be okay...  
  
"Willow, Willow, pick up the phone," she sobs.  
  
"Dawnie, why are you crying?" asks Buffy from behind her.  
  
Dawn drops the phone and lunges for Buffy. But her sister's body is insubstantial like a wall of smoke and she crashes into a counter.  
  
"You're a ghost," whispers Dawn.  
  
"Not really," says Buffy. "I'm just not entirely here." She holds out her hand. "Are you coming with me?"  
  
"Where?" sniffs Dawn.  
  
"Up there, silly! Coming?" says Buffy cheerfully, like she isn't dead and is suggesting they get pizza and rent some funny movie to laugh to death over. "Aren't you coming?"  
  
_Aren't you going?_  
  
Buffy disappears as suddenly as she arrived.  
  
"Buffy, come back!" screams Dawn.  
  
"Hurry up, Dawnie, I can't wait all day!" comes Buffy's voice from thin air.  
  
She tries to run. Anywhere, somewhere, nowhere but here. But she trips over the bag she had dropped on the floor and the TV cord twists around her ankle.  
  
She drags herself back up and limps into the kitchen, the cord still wrapped around her foot. She unwinds it and holds it up.  
  
"If you'd like to make a call, please hang yourself and try again," says the dead operator's shrill voice from the hanging telephone.  
  
It is a good idea. She grabs a chair and stands on it so she can reach the fan. Then she drapes the cord around it, tears streaming down her cheeks and her hands shaking spastically as she ties a tight knot the way the voices tell her to.  
  
"Come on!" says Buffy's voice again. She finishes forming the noose and drapes it over her neck.  
  
But she can't jump. The floor looks so far away and she is scared of heights. She remembers the tower, how high it was off the ground and how Buffy jumped and fell a long long way down.  
  
_Buffy jumped for you_, reminds a voice.  
  
But Buffy jumped for her, and she should jump for Buffy too.  
  
The soft voices all blur together in their urgings for her to jump and end it all, to be with Buffy.  
  
Dawn is just about to take the noose off when Buffy appears again, right underneath her.  
  
"Jump Dawnie, I'll catch you, even though you couldn't catch me," she says.  
  
It will be all right; Buffy will catch her, she dimly thinks.  
  
And so she jumps.  
  
Buffy disappears the moment she steps off the chair and in the last brief seconds she hears the voices rejoicing. Buffy is rejoicing along with them.  
  
"You told her to die. Good job guys, she's going to be dead soon. " says Buffy.  
  
And then the cord goes slack.


End file.
